The effect of pre-movement on evacuation times in a simulation model

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The evacuation time of a building in an emergency can be broken
down into a number of constituent times including the pre-evacuation time and the
travel time. This paper examines how distributions of pre-evacuation times affect the
occupant travel time and hence their effect on the evacuation time in the Simulex
model. A simple scenario is assessed mathematically and compared with the results
from Simulex with further simulations carried out on a somewhat more complex
scenario. Where we expect the pre-evacuation time to be characterised by a
distribution of values simply adding the maximum pre-evacuation time and the
movement time over-estimates the evacuation time. Furthermore, when the preevacuation
distribution is small the travelling and queuing effects dominate the
simulated evacuation time. When the pre-evacuation distribution is large then travel
and queuing effects are not so important and it is the pre-evacuation time that
dominates. Finally the paper examines some aspects of the Simulex model in
situations where there is a high occupant density in a space.